[jamesmp98]

When I was 11 or 12 I was put on anti-depressant and anti-psychotic medications (some off label). Several years later, it's discovered the company had illegally marketed one of the drugs to minors and it had developed into negative side effects in some patients, for which there was a class action lawsuit. Luckily, I never developed said side effects personally, but it did leave a level of distrust with pharma companies and to an extant the medical field

[avgDev]

I mean big pharma creates mistrust time after time. Look up Bayer selling HIV infected blood products in Africa after removing it from the North American market.

Opiates were marketed as sleeping aid for babies.

Synthetic opiates, such as tramadol were marketed not to be addictive that turned out to be a lie.

Many medications were taken of the market due to side effects, and often the pharmaceutical company knew and downplayed the side effects.

Anti-depressants were also supposed to be safe and non addicting, but withdrawals are actually insane.

I have been nearly crippled by an antibiotic and again side effects are downplayed, and FDA is updating the label year after year adding more and more side effects and not recommending the medication as first line treatment anymore.

[opportune]

It's also an issue that sometimes statistically insignificant adverse side effects can be successfully used to litigate against pharma companies.

For example as a teenager, I desperately needed accutane. Other solutions weren't working and some had actually more severe side effects than accutane; one tetracycline gave me heartburn so severe I basically couldn't eat anything, whereas the most accutane did was dry out my skin.

But because of studies that found a link to increased rates of depression/suicide among people taking accutane, it took years for me to work my way up to taking it, with very bad damage to my self esteem over that time. And if you look up the studies that promote this link, they are obviously not properly controlled, because they compare accutane users to the general population, and not to a subpopulation that has acne bad enough to need accutane. Which is dumb because lots of people (like me) who were taking accutane already had depression not because of the medicine, but in part due to very low self esteem and social ostracization due to the acne that was bad enough to warrant taking that drug.

So the symptom they were trying to prevent was something I already had, and withholding the drug because of concerns about that symptom contributed to making the symptom even worse for me.

[fucking_tragedy]

To contrast your experience, I was prescribed an oral retinoid as a teenager. As someone who was already depressed, what followed was one of the worst depressive episodes of my life.

There's definitely a fine line to walk between effective treatment and harm reduction when it comes to that class of medication.

Sorry to hear about your experience. I hope things are better now.

[onemoresoop]

Do you think you got any benefit from the aforementioned medications? If you did then maybe it was luck that you did not incur the negative side effects and yes, any profit generating device is to be a a bit distrusted and treated with somewhat skepticism.

[jamesmp98]

> any profit generating device is to be a a bit distrusted and treated with somewhat skepticism.

Yes, but I feel that these days, at least on the internet, speaking with skepticism about medicine and pharma companies will have people equating you with anti-vaxxers, given the arguments are often similar

[ecocentrik]

Conspiracists are not skeptics. Skeptics question commonly accepted beliefs to arrive at a deeper understanding of those beliefs, while conspiracy theorists replace commonly accepted beliefs with less commonly accepted alternatives with only superficial scrutiny of either. The conspiracists takes a dogmatic stance of opposition while the skeptic sees adherence to dogma as a pitfall to be avoided.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skepticism

[mcshay79]

How about, instead of putting derogatory labels on people to belittle their efforts to understand truth, we all simply strive for truth?

> The conspiracists takes a dogmatic stance

What, all of them? And who are the "conspiracists"? Those who disbelieve the 9/11 myth, who question the long-term health effects of drugging water systems, who question the safety of wireless transmitters installed in every cubic inch of the world, who see through war propaganda and manufactured history? There are a thousand more "trigger topics".

All of these people are the same, huh? Dogmatic dolts who can't do research? Dummies who don't accept official narratives simply because they're trouble-makers?

The power system maintains its stranglehold over the population because our implicit slavery has been normalized. Is there any earthly reason why we should have billionaires next to people starving to death? We accept this because it has been normalized. There has always been a war on information, but we finally have the means to take back control. But in order to do so, we have to want it.

[fwip]

Conspiracists will always tell you they're skeptics, though.

[ecocentrik]

I've found that individuals in physical or psychological pain tend to have limited capacities for criticality while also searching for solutions to their pain. 9/11 and anti-vax conspiracies can be attributed to this. Having two skyscrapers fall on your neighborhood has to be traumatizing and finding out your child is not what you expected her to be is no walk in the park.

The largest source of trauma in the country right now is school gun violence. The gun control movement being led by the traumatized victims of gun violence, regardless of it's ultimate effectiveness, is the healthiest response to trauma I've seen in the US. It took suburban middle class children access to therapists, to start moving that conversation towards a place of sanity. If their pain never subsists, what kind of adults do you think they'll be?